


Two-Ten Back

by jenni3penny



Series: McAvoys 1.0 [11]
Category: The Newsroom (US TV)
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-04-26
Updated: 2018-09-01
Packaged: 2019-04-28 02:11:42
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 2,517
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14439252
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/jenni3penny/pseuds/jenni3penny
Summary: “Cambridge, honey, really? This is live news.”





	1. Chapter 1

It's a Thursday when it strikes her - but there's nothing particular about the day, really.

There's really nothing that either of them specifically did or said before or...

There was nothing that sent her from her place in the control room to the studio mid-air. Not that she can recall, in any case. No particular impetus or reasoning, not before she finds herself watching him dazedly from the side of the studio, vision slightly unfocused. She's just out of camera shot and still she notes that he's tracked her presence, a barely noticeable shift of his glance, minuscule and maybe a millisecond. But nothing had her suddenly having an epiphany or anything of the sort. It's really more of just an urge, a need to say something rather than keep letting moments pass by her.

And she realizes, as the studio lights already warm the back of her neck, that she's right in the line-of-camera-sight and, God, she has no idea how much time they have left before commercial ends or how she's even made it from Control to Studio C to leaning against the front edge of the anchor desk.

Fuck. He distracts her so thoroughly some days.

It's absolutely _infuriating_.

It's also sorta delicious, knowing that the quirked half grin that's pointed her way belongs to her, whenever she wants it, whenever she needs it. God, she covets that smile. “Billy McAvoy?”

“Yes, Ms McHale?” He's chuckling and semi-charmed as he says it, jaw lifted up and bemused by her surprise appearance. He just barely flicks a glance at the clock that hangs just behind the left of her head but she notices just the same. The clock he otherwise usually ignores in favor of asking her how much time they've got left to flirt and banter and argue semantics or politics or whatever it is that's tweaked his attention. “You know it's only, like, two-ten back, right?”

Mac shrugs one shoulder slowly and stretches her palms flat to the desk, leaning over it to give him an excellent view of cleavage as she hums heat into her voice, “I wanted to give you a note or two. Just a little - ”

“Or two? Right _now_?” Will drags his glance back up to her eyes regretfully, a bit startled as the words finally soak into the lust that's near instantly clouded his brain up.

“Now seemed appropriate,” Mac murmurs, purposely keeping her voice thrumming, keeping it hushed low. “The subject matter is... delicate.”

He snorts at her and rolls his eyes, shoulders banking back as he shakes his head at her minutely. He takes another subtle glance down the front of her shirt as he blinks to the clock and then back. “The budget proposal for the Department of the Interior is considered delicate subject matter? Since when?”

“Billy - ”

“Cambridge, honey, _really_? This is _live_ news,” he tells her, tone strangled and condescending at once. Leave it to Will McAvoy to be apologetic and a know-it-all prick all at once, subtle as can be.

“You still have almost two minutes. Ish,” she counters.

His brows both lift up simultaneously at the single syllable she tacks onto the end and his blue eyes widen out a little as he grips harder into the papers he's holding. Right, got his attention now, she does. And he's getting impatient, he's getting twitchy, anxious. “What's the problem, Mac?”

“C'mere,” she says as she tips her head forward, implies he should get closer. And he looks both bewildered and incredulous at once, the blue of his eyes darkening a little as she motions him in. “C'mon then. I mean it.”

He meets the movement slowly, warily, “Mac - ”

“I love you, Billy.”

It's like a breath to her, really. So much lighter and gentler than she'd expected.

She'd expected weight, something heavy with importance, something hard and thick on the tongue.

But it had been effortless instead, light. It had been immaterial.

And he is utterly lost, suitably confused by her awkward timing. “You just... I mean, you... _you what_?”

“You heard me,” she whispers into laughter, the sound hashing into a moan as he kisses her hard across the desktop. He's got one hand up under her jaw, stroking to the back of her neck to keep her prized tight as he drives his tongue into her mouth and she lets him. It's hot and sexy and she can feel her fingers curl against the desk as he groans onto her tongue. It isn't desperation in his kiss so much as relief, appreciation and just... adoration.

It's love, it's him, and it's hers.

She can see that even as the kiss ends and his hand drops on top of hers, his eyes glossed bright.

“Guys, twenty seconds back. Wanna wrap this up, maybe?”

Right... because they're in the middle of a live national broadcast. No big deal.

“I just...” She reaches up with the other hand to wipe at smeared lipstick (which doesn't actually exist), feigning fixing him as a sudden swell of nervous heat envelopes her entire body. She's suddenly completely flushed, terrified, wishing she'd never come, but... “I wanted to tell you.”

It sounds lame (sophomoric and stupid) even to her own ears, echoing somewhere outside the thundered rushing of blood. What was she even thinking? She _hadn't_ been thinking, really. Obviously. It was the very fact that she was the most rash and abrupt and likely thoughtless of the McHale children that had led her here (except maybe her youngest sister... but _still_ ).

She can hear Eddie freaking out somewhere in the back of her consciousness but she just gives Will a smile as she retreats. A simple smile, just one that's clean and sincere (hopefully).

“Mac... I'm so glad you did.” His breath stumbles and stutters as she steps away from the desk and back, her fingers fidgeting against the IFB to connect her to control once again. “You're fucking insane, though. You know that right?”

She can see the mirth in the brightness of his eyes as he turns and addresses the camera, welcomes back his audience. In the studio lights the blue is just so glass-bottle-bright and beautiful. It's crystalline clear glossed and everything bright, just like everything she's ever found attractive in those eyes of his.

Because they're loving and warm and gentle. Mischievous and brilliant, bold.

Nobility often lives in the brightness of his eyes and it's something that's never seemed to even pay rent on Brian's person. Meanwhile, Will McAvoy wears it like a designer suit, fit for Sunday church and tailored perfectly. Being a gentleman, being kind... it suits him perfectly.

Maybe she fell in love with his blue eyes on the day she met him.

She fell for the rest of him somewhere else along the way...

To be fair, there was really very little chance that she wouldn't.

 

* * *

 

 

“Are you fucking kidding me?!”

She'd never returned to the control room and so she just grins as she pulls the headset back, lets it loop her neck from behind and set to her shoulders. “You did wonderfully, Billy.”

He follows the way she flicks her pony tail out with an intense look, interested and with a modicum of longing.“Was that just to fuck with me? Because I'm not sure - ”

“That was perfectly serious, actually,” she answers, stepping forward as he shoves his chair back and lets his body go loose. His eyes flick from where the headset has caught up her ponytail and back up so that he can meet her eyes, so he can assess her seriousness.

The near unending length of him is so much more obvious behind the desk when he stretches his shoulders back and his legs forward. He's a little cocky in tipping the chair back, a little heady with the knowledge of what she's said, what she's implied, and with a show well-done. He's obviously delighted but he's also still so wary, so cautious, and she feels a twinge of guilt for mashing those emotions together inside him. He should be so freely pleased and the way she's treated him, the way she's kept him at a distance... well, it's had an affect on him, on them.

“Why now?”

Her lashes drop and she realizes that she's smiling as she answers, voice culled quiet, “Because you have especially beautiful eyes.”

Will squints at her, jaw turning with near distrust. His whole body is still loose but his eyes are darker than they were, “I think you are fucking with me.”

“Possibly tonight, yes,” she agrees with a grin.

“For fucking sure, tonight, yeah.” He grins slowly, his head tipped back so that he can study her entirely. And she doesn't fidget the way she usually would, she doesn't care that the entire studio is probably glued to one of the three camera feeds after the show they put on during commercial. “Thank you.”

His appreciative tone and the sincerity that lives in his words... She shakes herself out of worrying about others and instead just enjoys the way he's looking at her, so innocently loving. “Get outta that suit. I want to pick up dinner before we go home.”

“Come get me outta this suit,” Will murmurs after her, slouching the chair farther back and slanting himself so that he can watch her walk toward the studio exit door.

“Some of us work for more than two hours a day, sir.”

He laughs behind her and the sound sings up the levels of her spine. “Did you just call me ' _sir_ '?”

Mac just rolls her eyes as she slaps the door open, shoving against it with some sass in both her movement and tone, “Don't get used to it.”


	2. Chapter Two

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Writer's block has been an absolute beast guys. I haven't been able to beat it. So there are a couple spots in this chapter that could have used way more but it's been too long now and I wanted to get at least a little something to you. xoxo

To be entirely fair, they only almost break the door because she's a bit clumsy and he's much too large a man to save them both from falling without some sort of physical repercussion. There will always be inertia in existence (science is _science_ , really) and she will always lack the sort of integral grace that most all her sisters have. And Will will almost always try to save her from landing in a piled heap that's only come about because she was too busy kissing him to see where she (or he) was going.

And, also, to be fair to her neighbor, the loud banging of the door rebounding and the litany of thumps and noises that had come after may have sounded much more ominous than they really were.

Especially when Mac herself can't bite back the moan that gets pulled up from the base of her lungs as he rubs his nose against her clit, his tongue doing wonderful things inside her.

He's got her wedged near painfully against the two locks and the door finally shut and her skirt is recklessly shoved up past her hips so that he can get exactly what he's spent the afternoon mooning after. She shivers hard from her core as he lifts her leg higher against his shoulder and presses closer. Her knickers hadn't even made it past the cab ride home, already wadded in his jeans pocket and there isn't a homecoming much better than getting Will McAvoy's handsome face between her legs first thing.

“MacKenzie, dear?!? Are you all right?”

“She'll go away, Mac. Shhh.”

“She's _worried_ , Will.”

“MacKenzie?!”

A rumbling comes up him that sounds like repetitive negation but, God, she can't help answer. Even as his mouth brushes against her with a stuttered “Don't - ”

“I'm just fine, Mrs Rosen!”

She shoves him back enough to turn and the last image she has of him is a cocked smirk of surprise and his brow arched up smugly. But it's his hands that catch her hips still and grab at her attention as she tries to crack the door open, the older woman's voice coming from the other side as she swallows a laugh and feels him kiss her hip and then nip at it. “Are you sure?”

She does love him, completely. And admittedly so, now, after what she'd done.

At least, she thought she did... before he impishly pressed his middle finger up inside her while otherwise staying perfectly still in a supposed attempt at keeping the ruse.

Blue-eyed-beautiful son of a bitch. She really _does_ love him to the absolute brink of insanity.

She can feel the moan swell up her throat and the best she can do is fake a high pitched and breathless laugh, shaking her head and trying to avoid the older woman's eyes.

There's no way she can keep this up if he insists on touching her throughout the entire conversation.

“I'm all right, Rachel. I'm just terribly clumsy. Just a mess to clean up is all.” She digs into his hair and tugs sharp as he lets his teeth scrape on her hip, his tongue lashing up after each welted mark. He's obviously emboldened by the fact she's trying to act as if her boyfriend doesn't secretly have a finger inside her, fucking incorrigible man. She's doing a piss poor job of it too, because the older woman is looking at her as if her head's on fire.

( _God_ , he makes her feel alive some days.

Just vivid, visceral, and entirely tangible.)

“You're sure?” their neighbor asks with a watery squint and Mac could choke as he slowly drags his hand down, releasing from inside her so that he can wipe dampness against the back of her knee.

“Just right as rain.” Her voice goes breathless but sing-song-y as his cheek presses against the outside of her thigh and she could fucking kill him as he whispers a laugh, she could just absolutely murder the hulking bastard.

“Is William home soon? I hate thinking of you being all alone in there.”

Good Christ, their saintliest neighbor is the only woman on the planet allowed to refer to him as _William_ with every passing mention and MacKenzie snorts a breath at the sound of it, her laughter fueled by the absolute ridiculousness of the situation. And also his kisses running down the side of her thigh.

“He's coming along, of course. Thank you!” MacKenzie McHale was raised to be courteous and kind while interacting with her elders, of course.

But she's fairly sure that, in this particular situation, even her own mother would tell her _'For the love of Christ, MacKenzie Morgan, shut the bloody door!'_.

It takes her only half a millisecond more to shut the bloody door.

“I hate to think of you being alone in here too, sweetie.” His voice, as he speaks, is full with mirth and adoration and she wouldn't trade the wide world for being able to hear the actualization of his loving. “I'd better make sure you're safe.”

She giddily meets his affection with the breadth of her own and matches his sparked laughter as well. “God damn it, Billy. I hate you.”

“Oh, _honey_ ,” his eyes are the bluest of blue as he grins wide and continues, “that's not at all what you told me this afternoon.”


End file.
